It's a wooly world out here!

We have the technology...now we need the will to use it...both business and consumer will...

Animal hides and wool...

WOOL

The U.S. sheep industry, a smaller but important component of the meat industry, produces 40 million pounds of raw wool per year.

Domestic wool is threatened by the influx of imported wool treated for shrinkage resistance by chlorination, a process that produces large amounts of absorbable organo-halogens (AOX).

Although some U.S. wool is exported for processing, the military and many law enforcement agencies are required to use domestically raised and processed wool for their uniforms and other products.

Representatives of the armed forces have expressed interest in replacing synthetic materials in undergarments with comfortable wool. They are currently evaluating wool modified by an enzymatic process developed at ERRC in the predecessor project.

Meeting additional needs of the military for altered wool properties--non-flame-ignitability, navy whiteness, and oil and water repellency--requires further research on the functional modification of this woolen fabric.

Domestic wool has properties that limit its acceptance and competitiveness when compared to imported wool. Environmentally benign methods for adding value to U.S. wool will encourage domestic processing while reducing the reliance on imports.

LEATHER

Animal hides are high value coproducts of the meat industry, and the U.S. beef industry is the major, worldwide, source of cattle hides, valued at over $1 billion annually, for leather production.

Tanning, the process of converting hides into high value, durable leather is rapidly being transferred to countries with lower environmental standards and labor costs. The result has been a major loss of jobs in the domestic leather industry, which is partially offset by the opening of tanneries associated with meat packing facilities where some chrome tanning of hides into unfinished leather ("wet blue") is now occurring. The processes used to convert two tons of "wet blue" into finished automotive upholstery leather leave the processor with a ton of solid waste, mainly a complex of collagen with chromium.

We have developed a cost effective process for converting this waste, currently deposited in landfills, into high-grade technical gelatin, and collagen hydrolysate. Lack of domestic markets for this technical gelatin has hindered the adoption of this process by the U.S. leather industry.

Development of high quality chrome-free leathers in response to the preferences of consumers, particularly in European markets, is hindered by a lack of understanding of tanning mechanisms.